Angola’s two mobile telecommunications operators lost about 800,000 users between 2014 and 2018, the chief executive of the Angolan Communications Institute (INACOM) announced on Thursday in Luanda.

António Moniz Gonçalves said that the number of users fell from 14 million in 2014 to 13 million in 2016, before rising to 13.3 million in 2017 and falling again to 13.2 million in 2018.

Angola has two mobile operators, Unitel and Movicel, with 13.3 million users representing about half of the country’s population.

The secretary of state for telecommunications, Mário Augusto da Silva Oliveira, quoted by the Angop news agency, said that the fall in the number of users was due to updating telephone numbers and the economic-financial crisis that the country is experiencing.

Meanwhile, Inacom recorded an increase in the number of fixed telephony users, from 161,000 in 2017 to 171,800 in 2018.

Regarding Internet access, Gonçalves said 4.4 million users were counted in 2017, which is expected to reach 5.9 million by the end of this year.

These figures were given at the end of a training session on statistical indicators of the International Telecommunication Union promoted by Inacom, which brought together technicians and officials from Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal. (Macauhub)